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Left 4
Dead 2

Score: 10 / 10

I can't count the number of hours I spent
enjoying the original Left 4 Dead and after having fun with many hours
of Left 4 Dead 2, I can tell that it's going to be my standby game in
the coming months for when I don't know what I really want to play.

Nearly everything about Left 4 Dead has
been improved, so by typical Internet logic I should be slapping
Left 4 Dead 2 with an 11 out of 10. (A revisionist review of the
original is best left for another time.) From the changes in weather
and time of day to the character banter; from the new Special
Infected to the improved graphics; from the way the lengthy levels
change slightly to the heightened level of teamwork

necessary for success. And the
fragments of story, pieced together by the government warning
posters and scrawled messages on safe room walls, is icing on the
cake. I'm sure Valve will find a way, but I'm not sure how they can
top this effort.

I lauded praise on the original for the
way it forced players to stay together; there was no going it alone.
The

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sequel makes this aspect even stronger
with the inclusion of two new special infected -- the Jockey and the
Charger -- which specialize in breaking up groups. The Charger can
temporarily stun an entire team, grab one of the Survivors on the
way through, then pound them into the ground repeatedly. In the
resulting confusion, having a Jockey grab one of the other Survivors
and riding him off into the sunset fragments the group even further.

However, sticking together does not
mean huddling in one spot and slowly working across the map. This
camping (or "slugging" across a map, as I like to call it) does not
work thanks to the last of the new Special Infected: The Spitter.
The Spitter's special attack is horking a glob of acid so if there's
any camping going on, a single well-placed spit will get the campers
moving.

Players still have to contend with the
leaping Hunter, blob-like Boomer (male and female), the long-tongued
Smoker, and the endless stream of zombies (which makes a lot of
sense considering the setting of a once heavily populated area).

While I tend to play the Campaign and
Versus modes almost exclusively, I've dabbled with Survivor and
Scavenge mode, which are much more contained and very arena-like.
The competition is extremely fierce and if you're not pulling your
weight, your teammates will let you you know. Loudly and with
profanity.

I would describe Scavenge Mode as a
kind of roving capture the flag. In these arenas, playing as the
Survivors, you have to grab gas cans and return them to a central
point to refuel a generator or car. As usual, the objective of the
Infected is to take down the Survivors.

But Left 4 Dead 2's pièce
de résistance for the hardest of the
hardcore is Realism mode. Honestly, I haven't been brave enough to
try it and might never be brave enough to give it a go. Realism
removes the helpful silhouettes of the Survivors, makes zombie
headshots a necessity, and dead Survivors don't respawn and they
can't be revived with the new defibrillator unit. To me, this is a
kind of crazy that would only frustrate me, though it does shove
teamwork in your face, which is something Left 4 Dead 2 excels at.
I've read some pretty "horrible" stories online about players
tackling Realism so I'm not sure I want to join that particular
group of broken people.

One of
the things I keep thinking about is just how much harder Left 4 Dead
2 is compared to the original, even on Normal setting. The five
"movie" Campaigns, hung loosely together, are much more varied in
setting and tone than the original, but it is consistently more
difficult. There's one setup close to the end of Dark Carnival ("You
must be this tall to DIE!") that continually downed my entire group
four or five times before we "figured it out." It basically amounted
to running down a narrow pathway with the chainsaw held out in front
and hoping for the best. The flow of regular zombies is unending,
nevermind Special Infected. For example, a Charger appeared further
up the pathway. It promptly ran over the entire team and grabbed
hick Ellis. The distraction was just long enough for a Hunter to
land on Rochelle. Pretty much game over at that point.

The AI
Director handling it all this is a devious son of a bitch. Just when
you think, "Hey we might make it!" the music swells and you're
facing a Tank. Or two. Never think that you can let your guard down,
even on normal. And for crying out loud, play with other people!
While playing offline with only the AI-controlled Survivors to back
you up is absolutely possible, Left 4 Dead 2 needs to be played with
live people.

In only
a couple of weeks, I've had many of the best gaming moments of 2009.
When the storms kick up on Hard Rain making it really easy to
startle a wandering Witch, escaping the mall in Dead Center, running
around a rollercoaster track in Dark Carnival, running a gauntlet of
abandoned vehicles across the bridge in The Parish, reviving a dead
Survivor in Swamp Fever as a Tank could be heard somewhere behind
me and managing to down the Tank with the guy I just saved. Even
just writing about it makes me want to jump in and play some more.